Usable ‘Store Finders’
I’ve been doing some investigation into Store Finders recently and I’ve found one that is so quick, simple and easy to use that I thought I’d mention it here.
It’s for women’s fashion retailer Jane Norman, and can be accessed here:
http://www.janenorman.co.uk/pws/StoreFinder.ice?country=GB&page=Stores
The design is uncluttered and the finder guides the user towards their goal with a couple of simple clicks.
The Store Locator page in its initial state
Choices are made using Drop-down lists, which have known usability and accessibility implications, but the implementation here seems to fit with general best practice recommendations while avoiding most of the pitfalls, such as overly long lists.
Choosing a region:
A drop-down list to choose the region you are looking for
At this stage the region break-down seems to find the right balance between being too broad/generic and too narrow/restrictive.
Picking the store in your chosen region:
A drop-down list to choose a specific store
The item labels in the drop-down list are descriptive enough to give the user some meaningful options, without being too wordy.
If you were simply looking to verify a store’s general location this might be enough detail for you already.
Results page:
The Store Locator results page showing useful store information and an embedded Google map
The results page contains lots of useful information:
- full address
- contact details
- store opening hours
- embedded google map
The implementation of Jane Norman’s Store Finder uses traditional form posts, which result in page refreshes after each selection, but I don’t see any reason why it couldn’t all be done inline using a bit of JavaScript (where available) for an even smoother experience.
Additionally, it would also be nice if the results page could also offer a ‘permalink‘, so it can be easily bookmarked for later reference.
Using the feature feels much more friendly than asking the user to enter a postcode, which is the other commonly used technique.
Further reading
- Usability study of 35 store locators on Dutch retail websites: http://www.webmapper.net/locators/
- Store Finders and Locators (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox):
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/location-finders.html
Thanks for a really useful article. I’m designing a store finder at the moment and have been trying to find all the best elements to include Your post describes some really good ideas – thank you!